Everything else can wait, agriculture can’t.
Interpretation
Agriculture is a fundamental and urgent priority that cannot be postponed.
Norman Borlaug's quote emphasizes the critical importance of agriculture in sustaining life and society. It suggests that while many aspects of life can be put on hold, the processes that feed and nourish humanity must always take precedence, highlighting agriculture's role in food security and the well-being of the planet.
In practice
In a speech addressing climate change, this quote can remind audiences of the urgency for sustainable agricultural practices.
During the past three years spectacular progress has been made in increasing wheat, rice, and maize production in several of the most populous developing countries of southern Asia, where widespread famine appeared inevitable only five years ago
We must recognize the fact that adequate food is only the first requisite for life. For a decent and humane life, we must also provide an opportunity for good education, remunerative employment, comfortable housing, good clothing, and effective and compassionate medical care.
We are 6.6 billion people now. We can only feed 4 billion. I don't see 2 billion volunteers to disappear.
Nevertheless, the number of farmers, small as well as large, who are adopting the new seeds and new technology is increasing very rapidly, and the increase in numbers during the past three years has been phenomenal.
Africa needs roads. Roads bring know-how and fertilizer to farmers and ideas and business for commerce.
This is a basic problem, to feed 6.6 billion people. Without fertilizer, forget it. The game is over.
The skies and land are so enormous, and the detail so precise and exquisite that wherever you are you are isolated in a glowing world between the macro and the micro.
People need to look at wildlife conservation in its totality. As soon as you lose the apex predator, it has harmful consequences right down the food chain.
It drives me crazy to see so much of this planet's life so casually endangered. The first steps are so easy (drive smaller cars, for instance) that it's very hard to understand why we haven't taken them. But I know that this is the issue our generation will be judged by.
Running gives me a clearer perspective on the world, and it makes me feel special. I've never been a traditional tourist. I've always seen the world by running, and that has allowed me to view things in a different way. Places look different in the early-morning hours, when the streets are deserted.
I have made my home among the mountain gorillas.
You either get the point of Africa or you don't. What draws me back year after year is that it's like seeing the world with the lid off.
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